Australia has a rich tradition of producing some of the most unfettered, uncontrollable metal. The country's most prominent bands, such as Sadistik Exekution, Bestial Warlust (the former band of Destroyer 666 leader K.K. Warslut), and Portal, are united by an absolute abandon of conventional form and an emphasis on conjuring as much chaos as their equipment can physically accommodate. The guitars can sound so reckless that they make Kerry King's free soloing sound like the most conservative nylon-string plucker, the drumming perfectly balances skill and savagery, and the vocalists less resemble singers than they do drill sergeants in spikes. It's metal taken to its absolute limits, nearly bordering on experimental music; Impetuous Ritual, whose guitarists Ignis Fatuus and Omenous Fugue are also in Portal, carry on Australia's reputation for madness with their second album, Unholy Congregation of Hypocritical Ambivalence, which blurs the ever-thinning lines between death metal and noise.
The quartet is sometimes confused as a Portal side project due to the shared members, who in reality only recently joined the long-running Portal; it's also tempting to assume that Impetuous Ritual represent a middle ground between Portal and Grave Upheaval, the latter of which Ignis Fatuus also plays drums in. Portal's sound is more jagged, though, and unless you literally recorded your album in a cave, it is impossible to sound more subterranean than Grave Upheaval. For Impetuous Ritual, repetition is more strongly emphasized than those bands, with tremolo-picking that builds and reinforces a howling wall of despair.
There are elements that break up the blackened torrent—the bells on “Metastasis,” some disjointed guitar solos here and there, the occasional doom-stomp—but otherwise the mood on Congregation is relentless and impossible to escape. In Portal, Omenous Fugue plays bass and Ignis Fatuus plays drums, so the fact that these guys can play a similar form of death metal in different roles makes you admire their skill in a way that triggers a fear for their well-being. Same goes for Ingnis Fatuus' vocals; mostly, he goes for a indecipherable growl, but on “Inservitude of Asynchronous Duality” he reaches piercing highs reminiscent of Absu's Proscriptor.
It's difficult to experience Congregation as anything but a full meditative experience. The vibe is so oppressive that it's not unreasonable to think that this record really does not give a fuck about any of your feelings. Is it oppression through freedom, or freedom through oppression? Congregation concludes with the nearly 15-minute “Blight,” and it's the most warlike in an album littered with doves' corpses. The song represents everything essential about Impetous Ritual pushed further and further into the breaking points of comprehension and endurance. If you made it through “Blight,” then congratulations. Your taste in death metal is superb, and you're probably a little imbalanced.
